Victims of automobile accidents and the like are usually picked up at the scene of the accident by an emergency crew and placed on a backboard or conventional ambulance stretcher for transporting to a hospital emergency room. At the hospital, the patient is usually transferred to another examining table and if X-rays are required, the patient may be wheeled on still another stretcher to an X-ray department and placed on an X-ray examination table. In the case of some spinal injuries and other types of injuries, these movements of the patient from one support structure to another can aggravate the injury in lesser or greater degrees.
With the above prior art practices in mind, it is the object of the present invention to provide a stretcher on which an injured patient can be placed at an accident scene for transportation directly to an X-ray department or facility where X-ray pictures of the patient can be taken without transferring the patient from the stretcher. To facilitate this, the stretcher possesses a patient support panel or backboard which is both transparent to light in the visual spectrum and permeable to X-ray radiation. Thus, a patient resting on the stretcher panel can be viewed from beneath the panel due to its transparency and an X-ray film positioned on an underslung holder beneath the panel can be exposed to radiation from above the stretcher passing through the patient and the permeable stretcher panel. The support panel, with its marginal frame, is detachably mounted on the under-carriage of a generally conventional stretcher, and attachments are provided on the stretcher for applying traction to a patient thereon.
Other features and advantages of the invention will become apparent during the course of the following description.